Every week I feel a little more abstract. I'm back to the process of opening up the raw and wondering where the edits will take me. Sometimes I go down a rabbit hole with an objective in mind only to hit a wall. Sometimes I have to start over because the edit isn't materializing in a visually pleasing way. It's as though it's missing something. But sometimes those walls give me an idea that I can start fresh with, and that's when I hit the sweet spot.

#71

With #71 I decided to make a selection of the blue from the reflection pool and paste it over and over, arranging each layer at different angles. That element has always reminded me of an elevator to somewhere intergalactic. Maybe a wormhole portal. I enhanced the blue in the original selection to draw the eye and highlight that beautiful color.

#72

I played around with gradients in #72 using two rainbow gradients at varying opacities to add more color while maintaining the same tonality.

#73

I used two pinch filters on #73 which created a lot of motion. It's as though the image is being sucked into itself like a black hole.

#74

On #74 I wanted to highlight the different triangles that have cropped up. If you look at the raw you can see the outline of the far left triangle. I selected two others to add some depth and masked all three to make them pop out. This was one of those edits that took some exploring.

#75

By the time #75 rolled around I realized that I hadn't done much editing through Luminar lately. I played around with adjustable gradients so I could adjust exposures and contrasts differently for top and bottom. By using a high key and Auckland cross processing filter I ended up with a golden hue throughout.

#76

Back to Photoshop for #76. I really love using the invert adjustment on this image. It creates that icy, snow palace look and feel. I wondered what would happen if I added a black and white adjustment to the inverted image. The results were not disappointing. I really liked the way it brought out the strong blacks and ethereal whites. I'm just now wondering how it would have looked if I rotated the image and maybe threw in some cropping...

#77

The last image of the week, lucky #77. I decided to explore gradients further. There's so many variations of gradients available, and I've gone so far as to customize my own. For this edit I settled on a stock gradient called "Carnival Reflective." I'm not sure about the title, but I love the color! By rotating the image 180 it brings the tree reflections right-side-up creating the sense of misty trees in the park.

That concludes week 11. Tune in next week to see what week 12 brings. Feel free to leave questions or ideas in the comments. Thanks for following along!